For once, you’re gonna wanna buy into labels. Buy this gear and tell the world you’re a tomboy.
I don’t have a simple answer for you because there is no simple answer. I can tell from the way you write about your boyfriend that you were very much in love, that you still love him and care about him, and that you have a deep friendship. The question that is lurking, unstated, is this: Do you want to be in this relationship anymore?
We’re weird friends, but we are friends. I would have you at my wedding. You’d be one of the first people I’d invite. I wouldn’t think twice about it.
Your bodies are dangerous to the status quo. Your bodies bust through the armor of the gender binary and the patriarchy. Your bodies fuck up neoliberalism. Your bodies are ending white supremacy and heteropatriarchy. Your bodies are evidence that the colonial project has failed; you are here despite it all. We are here despite it all.
When Geneva and I were driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in a rented convertible, I saw an entire cloud floating next to the highway in the sky over the desert. I could see it spanning what looked like the whole of the sky to the right of us, almost touching my shoulder. I watched it graze the universe on top and I saw rain pouring out of it in the distance and somewhere in the middle, there was a lightning bolt like a heartbeat.
I could have fit my entire life in that cloud. My entire fucked-up, tiny, timid life.
It only took us five minutes to drive past it.
I was her first. In fact, before me, no one — girl or otherwise — had fucked Marta. No one had plied their lips to her clit, no one had fingered her, no one had made her come. My index and forefinger broke her hymen. We spent long, luxurious hours in bed, stealing off when we could to cheesy hotels — we met as counselors at a Catholic girls’ camp run by nuns. When we didn’t have time away, we would find each other in bathrooms and closets; Marta would rub my clit until I came, mouth upon her shoulder. I’d leave spit trails on her polo shirt.
“We’ve been playing this subconscious game of cat and mouse for seven years. My sister went to her alma mater and actually my sister stayed at her old apartment. Literally, we’ve been a step behind each other for years. We met for the first time and I asked her a million and one questions.”
This is the love story that led to Alabama’s first gay marriage.
I haven’t felt safe in my own skin since [the attack]. I don’t know that I ever will again.